You cannot expect a foreign country to be more Catholic than the pope for you.

Of course, I didn't become an architect, but later on in Iran, I had a lot of contact and discussions with architects because Iran was developing, and I felt we shouldn't destroy the past and copy completely the West, which is the problem in developing countries.

I wanted to preserve the old buildings, not to destroy them and build something new.

Monarchies are above political parties. Sometimes political parties do things that are to the disadvantage of the country because they want to beat the other party. In Iran, where we have different religions and ethnic groups, it was a unifying factor.

I remember I went to an exhibition somewhere and one of the artists, an Iranian lady, said, "I wish we had somewhere that our paintings would stay forever." So this idea came to me. I said, "She's right, we should have a place to keep them, and not only Iranian art works, but also of foreign artists."

Iranian women are very courageous and active, even with all the oppression.

I was never interested in money. I always looked down on it. But now that I have less money, I see that without money, you cannot do much. Everything in the end is about money.